On Thursday, September 29, 2011, Gen. Marcia Anderson became the first African-American woman to receive two stars as a general in the US Army. After a 32-year career, she is moving to the office of the chief of the U.S. Army Reserve in Washington, D.C. The military promoted Anderson periodically and, when she became a brigadier general, Anderson became the highest-ranking African-American woman in the Army. Anderson’s father, Rudy Mahan, served in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, but never got to fulfill his dream of flying bombers.

“This is for people like him who had dreams deferred,” Anderson told the Associated Press.